Responsibilities that comes with PR: Community Service Day

Whoever said it was easy must have been on the wrong side of Public Relations but again, who said it wouldn't be quite an experience.

During the period I was an intern, I was reminded a lot of almost everything that is PR related that  I have learnt in class. In my placement journey, we dealt so much with corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to (European Commission, 2011) corporate social responsibility is the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society. And  to fully meet their social responsibility, enterprises should have in place a process to integrate social, environmental, ethical human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders.

In any organisation, key publics matter and should be made to feel so. Since the Government of Botswana is entitled to take care of the nation in support of their vision and mission, Office of the President has a responsibility to the nation and are doing their level best to show they care. This organisation serves the nation hence socially responsible. 

It is not just a matter of good deeds for the nation, but OP also gets feedback through interviews which are normally carried out in a variety of events as a way of finding out how the people of Botswana feel about certain things hence a two-way communication. 

During my fantastic experience, as a PR intern in OP, I have learnt that in every two months there is a community service day event, held in random parts of Botswana as a way to extend a helping hand to different communities. It is with great pleasure to mention that i was fortunate enough to have been involved in the planning of the February 1st 2013 event. The target audience for this event was the President, members of the parliament and communities at large. 

For two weeks I joined two PRO's as we went to different villages in the outskirt of Gaborone (The capital city of Botswana). During these trips we went to Village Kgotlas (traditional law court), Government owned schools, post offices, shelters, charity homes and local clinics. The point was to check if the buildings were in good condition or if workers had any complaints of their working conditions. 

I had the opportunity to see the sufferings and joy of my fellow country men.All this made me realise that being a government employee especially in the PR department could not be easy. Somehow we did not have enough time on our hands so we had to utilize the time we had, so trust me when I tell you time management is one important aspect of Public Relations. 

Since we did not have much time to come up with something big, and two weeks down the drain, we settled for the best option, a park (Tsholofelo park) in Gaborone. The park is where an African of Tswana origin who died in 1830, El Negro, was buried (El Negro's body was stolen and has been displayed for 170years in a museum in Spain before it was discovered and sent back to Botswana for a proper burial). 

Activities of the day were, tree planting, foundation laying, slashing of grass E.T.C. while ministers and the president took part in doing all those. 

Community farmers were encouraged to come and sell their fruits and vegetables as a way of helping themselves. At the end of the day, the job was well done and the event was a success. It was indeed an eye opening experience on the PR industry. I felt honored though to have interacted with ministers but mostly the President himself. 

Until next time, keep reading and enjoying my experiences with me. 

Below are pictures from the community service day: 

                  

                

            Minister of Education, Hon. Mrs. Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi Trimming a tree at Tsholofelo Park

Right: His Excellency the president of Botswana Lt. Genereal Seretse Khama Ian Khama with one of the elders at Tsholofelo Park

                

Some of the Community members slashing the grass at Tsholofelo Park during the community service day

                                      

                                              H.E with some ministers slashing grass at Tsholofelo park

  

         Ministers at work with the foundation mixture during the community service day

                                                                                                                                                             

All the World’s a Stage – Public Relations Isn’t a Career, It’s a Lifestyle!

Alternatively titled- 'I didn't choose the PR life; the PR life chose me'. 

I recently finished a customer relations campaign I had been working on, aimed at creating ‘community’ between all the home operating customers, as it was one of the areas my supervisor has suggested could be improved on. I had edited it multiple times, split it in two, amalgamated it with other ideas, recalculated due to means and edited it once again.   

Now in uni this is where the work basically ends.  Although I obviously knew in the ‘real world’ I would then need to implement projects, it turns out that the real world has another hoop through which I must jump; convincing superiors that the campaign is worth implementing. The managing director, unlike my tutors at a deadline, did not just accept what I’d come up with. He seemed happy with it, said the ideas were all interesting and certainly viable... but he’d changed his mind and was now thinking about maybe something like this or like that and of course we couldn’t possibly implement until May at the earliest. 

My first meeting with the managing director did not really go the way I’d pictured, and I must admit I was quite disappointed that my first project had been delayed. However I did learn some important factors about working life. Foremost of these lessons is that you need to consider all your target audiences when working in the ‘real world’-not just the company’s public's. The fact of the matter is everyone is your target audience at one time or another.  When pitching a campaign my primary target public becomes the managing director.  Like any target public, communicating with him requires research and a targeted approach. In this way my initial, somewhat disappointing meeting has ended up being a valuable research tool. 

For instance now I know that the best way to approach him is with bite sized pieces of information – not a 17 page campaign. It is also best to approach him with draft- he wants to be a part of the process and a perfectly polished campaign will only result in you rewriting it to accommodate his new ideas. I also need to be persistent, there are going to be many times when my timeline will be rejected, my meeting will be delayed and my ideas will be discarded. This should not stop me; rather it should inform my future attempts and communications.

The skills we learn to liaise, communicate and placate an organisation's publics are the same skills that are needed in the workplace, and indeed, day to day life. I find myself using the ‘ABC’ technique (Answer the question, Bridge, Communicate your key messages) not only when answering questions from customers but also when trying to pitch my campaign to my superiors. (A)Yes that sounds like a good idea, ( B)in fact, I’ve been working on something similar that will really (C) create a community vibe amongst home operators and also has a seminar element, do you have a minute for me to explain? 

The fact of the matter is that as an intern, you really don’t have much -well, any- power to say ‘this is the direction we’re going to go’. It really is a test of public relations skills to not only answer their questions and do what they want, but to also bridge and persuade them that you have the research and the ideas to help them achieve their goals. 

Sometimes I think that the ‘ABC’ technique for answering questions and the ‘RRR’ technique for answering crisis questions (remorse, reason, remedy) have been one of the single most important things I have learnt in my degree, not only for their use in the PR industry but for their use in tactful, diplomatic relations in the workplace and everyday life. It surprises me because it was only really touched on for one week in ‘PR media’, in a youtube video that I can’t even find anymore!

The truth is that as PR students the skills we learn not only inform and enrich our public relations work but also our lives. All the world is our stage.

Until next time!

Natasha Smith

14279030

P.S If anyone has a link to that video explaining ABC and the Three R’s could you let me know? I think it had a BBC guy talking about it... or something like that!

Who are your audience?

I just finished my fourth week at Baptistcare and it has been a rewarding experience so far. For the past few weeks I've been mainly busy writing for its quarterly magazine Reaching Out.

As a student majoring in Journalism and PR, I was excited to be given the task of writing stories for the magazine. I'm ecstatic that my supervisor has entrusted a big part of the magazine to me. I have written two stories for the Autumn edition to be published in a couple of weeks, and now I'm working on three stories for the Winter edition, one of which is a cover page story. The cover page story is about Baptistcare client George, a single dad who gives his life to caring for his two boys with autism. We went to interview him last week and it was a great experience.

As I was writing these stories, I found myself having a battle in my head. A battle I later on figured was the classic Journalism vs PR duel. Having been trained in journalism to always question PR stories and to only write 'newsworthy' stories, I struggled to write some of the stories. I constantly asked myself "So what? Who will want to know this?" and often the answer in my head was "Who are you kidding, no one wants to know about this!" I was tempted to say to my supervisor we should probably change the stories. 

But then I realised I had forgotten to ask myself a very important question: who are your audience?

All along I subconsciously had it in my head that I was writing for a newspaper, whose audience are the general public. Of course no one would want to know about another Baptistcare employee who just received a diploma! But I forgot that I wasn't writing for the general public. I was writing for a specific public. My audience are Baptistcare's employees, clients (and their families), supporters, sponsors and the local communities who have been reached by Baptistcare. Of course they'd want to know about a Baptistcare staff who just received an award.

I realised what my lecturers said was right. You need to keep your audience in mind when you write. In the bigger picture, it's part of tailoring your PR strategies and tactics to your stakeholders. Reaching Out may seem like 'just a magazine', but in the grand scheme of PR, it is a tool chosen by Baptistcare to keep its stakeholders informed and engaged with what's happening in the organisation. 

That realisation was quite a light bulb moment for me. It has shown me that it is possible to use my journalistic skills in PR without compromising the glorified 'news values'. The news values depend on who your audience are. Identify your audience rightly and you will write newsworthy stories for them. 

Facebook mistake!

This week was a week of uploading blog posts I wrote that had been approved as well as writing more blogs and focusing on 32dsg’s website content.

I usually upload Facebook posts about upcoming events, working off my events calendar, however this week their Facebook page was devoted to a competition we were offering for two tickets to Perth Fashion week. I think I have mentioned before in one of my previous posts that I have been made an administrator of one of their clients Facebook pages. Not realising I was on the client’s Facebook page (thinking I was on mine), I ‘shared’ the competition on their page. This has NOTHING to do with them or their target audience and therefore was a big mistake. Luckily one of the girls alerted it to me and I was quickly able to take it down. It just outlined the fact that social media while it is easy to use, free and global, it can be extremely dangerous. Luckily this was not such a massive blunder and was easily fixable but you can see how quickly something can turn into a crisis if it is not handled correctly. I may be able to ‘blame’ it on Facebook since it said I was on my own page when I ‘shared’ the post (not realising I had to click another button to say- switch to your personal page), however this would never stand if you were to argue your case in a crisis. Technology may fail you, but ultimately it is your fault in the end. You controlled the mouse and you pressed enter.

After that mistake was quickly rectified I continued with my work. I uploaded my Sharing Healthy Conversations article- choosing the best photo for the subject (one with the most important attendees included). I had to fix the lighting on the photo first and crop it so that all the focus was on the people in it. I had to link all the important peoples names to their personal pages (usually linked in accounts) and make sure everyone’s names were spelt correctly.

I continued to work on companies that are similar to 32dsg and an events list for their Facebook posts. After looking over what needs to be included in the report I was quite pleased to see that we need to write about our companies competitors. Because I have been looking at what other companies there are similar to 32dsg I have in fact been researching their competitors. I have also been looking at what they are doing differently and how we could incorporate some of these positive attributes into our company as well. By collating all this information 32dsg can take the best of their competitors traits and add them to their list of expertise.

It has been interesting for me to look back at the events the company or the people who work for the company have been involved in organising. From the Breast Cancer Foundation’s illumination campaign to the Grand Prix ball, the people working at 32dsg have a diverse range of skills and networks. It’s a privilege to be around such successful worldly people. The collation of events data that I have been looking at, I will be putting into succinct descriptions to put on their website under the events section. This is quite an important job (in my opinion) since ‘case studies’ or previous experiences are important for those wanting to use the company to see.

My blog post on the Perth Baby Expo got approved at 4:45pm but I wanted to stay until it was up online, linked and positioned well. I stayed on after everyone left however I like things to be done and to be done without rushing. I don’t think I will ever mind staying behind to finish up and do a good job. Once you’re at work, what’s another 40 minutes? I also got to write another post for a Frasers Restaurant lunch that the 32dsg team went to this week. It got approved right away (showing how much better I must be getting with my writing skills) and I put that one up too.

You can read all my blog posts on:

http://32dsg.com/blog/

And my news article on:

http://32dsg.com/?post_type=news

Thanks for reading guys!

Xx

Martine